Recently, The Economist published an excellent 4-part essay exploring China’s future. The first part, titled “What China Wants” looked at some of the major drivers of China’s economic and diplomatic policies. “China,” the author says, “is a nation that wants some things very much:” “At home its people want continued growth, its leaders the stability…
Month: August 2014
Learning Chinese in the 1920’s
As part of her research for a book about Esther Nelson, my friend Noel stumbled upon a digitized version of a Chinese language textbook used by foreign missionaries working in Sichuan Province in the 1920’s. It’s titled Chinese Lessons for First Year Students in West China, by Omar L. Kilborn. Besides the fact that the romanization is obviously not Pinyin,…
How Many USA’s Can You Fit Inside China?
I ran across this interesting map on the inter webs the other day. It divides the population of China into four different regions, each with a population roughly equal to that of the United States. As you can see, the issue in China is not simply that the population of China is so large (1.35 billion);…
Bike Repair Station
On Saturday my niece and I decided to go for a bike ride. Since she lives in downtown St. Paul, we arranged to meet at a parking lot on Shephard Road and bike along the Mississippi River. When I arrived, I noticed that one of the tires on my bike was running a bit low on…
Some Like it Hot
And some like it really hot. For those of you who are in that category, there’s a new noodle restaurant in Beijing that claims to have the spiciest bowl of noodles in the world. From The Wall Street Journal: Within China, there’s an age-old argument over which province has the spiciest food. There’s an old…
The “Face-kini” is Back!
It’s summer in China, which means thousands upon thousands of people are descending on the beaches in Qingdao (and other places). But here’s the thing — being on the beach means being out in the sun which means the potential for darkening skin which is considered a bad thing by Chinese women. Have no fear,…